119-ScienceReport

Science Report

01/16/2015

Danielle DeLatte

Two successful EVAs in two days keeps a scientist happy!

Yesterday Team Quadcopter took the hardware on a walking tour to visit a brain rock and petrified wood stump. They are mastering the controls handily and showed marked improvement in flying over the areas of interest and landing. They took several videos of the surroundings and had a successful EVA.

Team EVA Planning Tool switched gears a bit to complete a collaboration with International Space University students working on a sister rover to Phoenix, the rover at MDRS. The EVA was fully successful and many photos were taken that the students can use in gesture recognition and obstacle detection algorithms. During non-EVA time, they have been using every opportunity to modify and update the software to add new features.

Team Astronomy has been hard at work each evening calibrating the telescope and taking images. Today they are hoping to view a transit tonight. They report the sky is beautiful!

The Sociomapping experiment put out its next survey today and the team filled it out. The results have been quite positive, with the survey showing that the team is growing closer and expected collaborations are strong. The team looks forward to a more comprehensive report on Monday at the one week point!

Tomorrow an outreach EVA is planned that will take video with the quadcopter at the quarry. The team eagerly awaits video of this gorgeous location.